


Loki of Midgard

by RonanSmiles



Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Thor - All Media Types
Genre: Avenger Loki, Genderfluid Character, Loki-centric, Other, Romantic pairings tbd - Freeform, SHEILD
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-03
Updated: 2017-03-03
Packaged: 2018-09-28 00:52:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10060100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RonanSmiles/pseuds/RonanSmiles
Summary: Centuries ago, Loki fell from Asgard and from the grace of his father. Since then, he's split his time between Midgard and the rest of the universe. He's been happy to make his mischief in peace, until his skills are needed to track down an artifact from his past, forcing him to step out from behind pulling the strings and into the mantle of an Avenger.





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fic and I have no beta reader so buckle up for a MISTAKE. Also I know the summary sounds really serious but thats just b/c I am an overdramatic asshole.

Loki was in the middle of explaining the basics of quantum mechanics when a spy slid into the room. She was dressed like a business executive in a pressed pencil skirt, wicked red lipstick, and power heels that likely doubled as deadly weapons. It was a killer disguise and a disguise for a killer. Loki knew a lie and a predator when he saw one.

She sat down in the back row, eyes tracking him as he paced in front of the power point. He supposed it was a good thing that she was posing as an executive instead of a student. If she was a student, this could be the set up for an assassination, which would be annoying as he liked his current persona and would hate to have it implicated in the death of a spy. On the other hand, he didn’t like executives, not even fake ones, and his tolerance for them was lower than usual at the moment.

Just last week a man from Hammer Tech tried to poach him from the University. Usually, Loki handled poaching attempts from executives by accepting a dinner invitation, ordering the most expensive thing on the menu, and turning them down with backhanded insults. But after the guy said _Hammer_ for the thirty-ninth time Loki allowed himself to unleash some repressed rage and dumped expensive wine down the executives shirt front and called his penis “the little hammer” in front of the entire restaurant.

If her ability to craft a disguise is any indicator of her proficiency as a spy, she knows he always accepts a dinner invite from business executives and has only once poured wine on one. If her goal was to get him to talk one-on-one, she found the perfect disguise to pull it off.  
  
Despite his hyperawareness of the presence of Ms. Spy, he wrapped up class at his usual pace, dismissing the students with a quick reminder to do the assigned reading, a cruel three chapters from the textbook. Laura, one of his more brilliant students and an subtle brownnoser, came over and struck up a discussion about next week’s material. Loki let the discussion carry on at a natural pace and soon as Laura left the room, Ms. Spy stalked over, heels click-clacking down the linoleum.  
  
“Mr. Laufey, it’s a pleasure to meet you.” She said, offering her hand, her smile the perfect mix of faux politeness, greed, and excitement. Loki gripped her hand and was surprised to find it free of the calluses he’d expect from handling weapons. Out of professional curiosity, she wondered how she managed that.  
  
“It’s a pleasure to meet you too Ms.…”  
  
“Rushman.”  
  
“Well, what can I do for you Ms. Rushman?” He asked.  
  
“I am employed at Stark industries, which, as you might know, is currently working on broadening the field of renewable energy. On behalf of the company, I’d like to hire you to do some contractor work.”  
  
Loki’s eyebrow ticked up. He hadn’t expected that. “I have a PhD in Astrophysics, Ms. Rushman.” _And Medicine, and History, not that she’d know that_. “I cannot imagine I have much to offer Stark Industries in the field of renewable energy.”  
  
“You’d be surprised.” She said and hiked up her purse, unzipping it with her perfectly lacquered fingernails.  
  
He watched her idly. He had the same bag at home. It was a vintage Gucci and big enough to store all his usual stuff, plus his knifes, without an expansion spell. Ms. Rushman had great taste.  
  
She pulled out a folder and handed it to him.  
  
“What’s this?” He asked.  
  
“Open it and see.”  
  
Loki had never been one to forgo curiosity. He flipped open the folder and read the data once, and then again, his heart rate rising. Phantom tendrils of ice shivered across his skin. He recalled power spiking in his blood, a universe unfolding beneath his hands. Suddenly he was standing on the playing field of an entirely new game.  
  
“Ms. Rushman, where did you get _this_?” He asked, letting the tremble spread through his voice. She’d think it was the excitement of a scientist, and in a way it was.  
  
“Where we got it isn’t the issue. We want you to use an algorithm to trace its radiation.”  
  
“You lost it.” Loki said, unthinkingly, still feeling the vibration of winter in his bones.  
  
Ms. Rushman’s eyes narrowed minutely, a motion too small and too fast for a human to follow. But Loki was no human and had been on the tail end of that look more times than would be feasible to count. _Suspicion_.  
  
“How did Stark manage to loose something generating this much raw energy?” He added.  
  
“Well, you know how rich men are with their toys.”  
  
“Hardly, I live off a Professors salary.”  
  
She smiled and he knew he was back in the clear as much as he could be with someone whose job was to be suspicious. “So, will you do it?”  
  
Loki could taste the acceptance on his lips but swallowed it down. Appearing too eager would re-rouse suspicion. “I am not the primer scientist when it comes to gamma radiation, Ms. Rushman. Why have you come to me?”  
  
“Last year you hosted a talk on a theoretical algorithm for tracing certain elements through space. We have reason to believe that you completed the work. We want you to adapt that algorithm to our technology.”  
  
_Ymir’s balls, I hope its not off world._  
  
“What is it, this thing that I’m tracing?” He asked.  
  
She smiled. “Sign the contract in the folder and I’ll release the rest of the pertinent information later.”  
  
Loki pulled out the contract, read it, and asked for a pen.  
  
\-----

Loki knew Ms. Rushman, and the woman behind the veneer, were in a hurry. He was in a hurry himself. However, as far as he knew (and he knew a lot) most Professors couldn’t summon clothes and weapons to their person, so playing human meant going home to get an overnight bag.  
  
Ms. Rushman walked him to the gates of Columbia and gave him the run down. He was to go home and get his bag and come to the address on the paper in the folder (as if anyone couldn’t just Google Stark Tower). After that he would be debriefed on the object he was being hired to help find. He hated being ordered around, but in this case he would wether it. He'd be pulling the strings soon enough.  
  
Loki gave her a nod at the gates before striding down the streets of New York. His skin buzzed with the urge to teleport, but he could feel eyes on him, other spies following him down the street. He might have signed a Stark contract, but he knew this was bigger than one billionaire. With the artifact in play, it had to be. He was guessing it was SHEILD, but he wouldn’t bet his Professors salary on it. He didn’t know enough about the current state of human intelligence agencies to be sure. He’d been lax in that respect, which was something he’d remedy as soon as possible.  
  
Regardless of who had fucked up, if the artifact was active again he had to find it. The last time it was active, Loki had been in no place to hear about it much less stop it. He’d traveled off-world right before World War II to deal with his grief on a planet where he could wrack up a body count. He'd been pit fighting for seven Midgardian years by the time the news of the artifacts stirrings reached him. By the time he returned the cube had fallen back asleep and vanished from his sight.   
  
Naively, he hoped it would stay that way for a while, but things moved fast on Midgard. Humans died too fast and too easy for anything else. This time he would not succumb to foolish hope. He would not rest until he captured the artifact. Humans could not be trusted with it. He would not let his life on Midgard be threatened by anyone, this planet was his to do with as he wished, he would not allow any other meddlers onto his game board.  
  
A few minutes later, he stalked into the lobby of his building, his reflection bouncing off mirrors and tinted windows. Lucy Gomez, the doorwoman, smiled when she saw him and he remembered fondly the good old days, when humans shook at the sight of his anger and presented him with offerings.  
  
“Mr. Laufey, how are you this evening?”  
  
Loki’s responding smile hid a grit of teeth as he jammed the elevator button. Humans were always in a rush but Midgardian technology was so _slow_. “I’m doing good Lucy. I’m just coming back to grab some things before a late night at the office.”  
  
“You work too much.” She said.  
  
“And you worry too much.” He said, scoffing internally. His job at Columbia was hardly work, all of his ground breaking research on the subject of Astrophysics never saw the light of day. He only revealed enough to the humans to make sure they knew he was a Genius without arousing suspicion as to the extent of his knowledge. Plus, as a child his intellect had be largely ignored in favor of his brothers strength. To have mortals complement him for it now was no hardship.  
  
She shook her head at him as he hopped in the elevator, muttering something in Spanish about _always being in such a rush_. He decided to benevolently ignore the irony as the doors sluggishly closed.  
  
Loki’s apartment was on the tenth floor at the end of the hall. The door was an unremarkable brown with a bronze 107 stamped onto it. There was no buzz of technology in the hallway, which meant the people hiring him hadn’t installed cameras, so he didn’t bother to use a key. He pressed his hand to the wood, right over the numbering, and the door swung open, warm air sweeping over his skin in greeting.  
  
He stepped inside and the space unfurled around him, stone walls on either side sweeping upward, hung with pictures and housing deep-set windows that peered into the forests of his pocket dimension. Above him, the ceiling soared, dragon headed support beams snarling and laughing, crisscrossed with leafy vines and hanging baskets full of wild flowers.  
  
“I’m home.” He greeted, feeling the house wake up around him, the familiar magic chasing away the lingering cold and some of the tension in his shoulders.  
  
He headed deeper into the space, stepping lightly across the overlapping rugs that were spread across the floor and past various chairs and couches that were clustered around the room. Several bookshelves dotted the space, crammed with centuries worth of literature.  
  
On opposite side of the great hall, an wooden arch carved with serpents was embedded in the stone. Usually it led into a hallway but today it led directly to his bedroom. His bag was already laying on his bed, ready to be filled.  
  
“Thank you.” He said, heading over the dresser to grab several changes of casual clothes and then heading into his closet for several suits. “Lokakot, raise all your defenses please. Also, call an Uber for me.”  
  
The house’s magic hummed against his skin in response. He walked to the bag and tucked his clothes in, wincing as he folded the suits, which he just knew would wrinkle. Then he moved to the area that comprised his workspace, a massive desk bordered by cases full of magic grimoires, weapons, and his favorite artifacts.  
  
He grabbed a calf-skin bound journal that was spelled so that only he could write in it and read it, and sent it flying into his bag with a flick of the wrist. Next he reached to pull down his spear from its wall mount. As soon as he brushed it with the tips of his fingers it transformed into a bracelet in the shape of a golden snake swallowing its own tail. He looped it around his wrist and reached for the hilt of Gram, the truth-blade, which became another oroborus in the form of a ring.  
  
Arming himself like this was centering. As a child he had worn weapons in the way of Asgard, holstering his spear across his back to conform to delicate Aesir notions of masculinity. But as he grew older, and more himself, and spread out across the universe, he stopped bothering to garishly present his weapons and began to disguise them. There was little more satisfying than felling a man with jewelry, aside from killing them with a pair of pumps, that is.  
  
With that in mind he summoned his green stilettos with knife sharp heels from the closet with one hand and his bag with the other. After tucking the shoes carefully inside he slung the bag over his shoulder. As he headed back through the archway and into the main space, Lokakot murmured _goodbye_ and _goodluck_ and _goodwill_.  
  
He thanked her. He had the feeling that he could use as much of all three as he could get.


	2. Chapter Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just realized that there is another fic named "Loki of Midgard" when I googled my own fanfiction like a loser. I am terrible at naming things though, so. This is it folks.

It had taken some time but he had come to respect Midgard's prowess in the field of Architecture. Loki had photographs of himself in front of some of the most impressive examples of architectural ingenuity in Midgard. The Eiffel Tower during the 1889 World Fair, the Taj Mahal in 1906, the Empire State Building after its completion in 1931. As soon as Loki saw Stark Tower he knew he’d sooner lop off his own foot than take a picture in front of it for his collection.

Stark Tower stuck out like a sore, ugly thumb. Never had he seen a building so inexcusably horrendous, and he’d spent one disastrous night in Trump Tower and traveled Midgard when humans lived in thatched huts.

“Are you coming?” Ms. Rushman asked, stepping out of the building. Again, her presence was impressive, fake pleasantness overlaid over fake impatience. He could have trained her himself.

“Who designed this building?” He asked.

“Stark and Pepper Potts.”

“Its ugly.” He said, lip curling. “I do hope Stark is a better engineer than architect.”

Ms. Rushman smiled _. Not a lie_. “He is. Now, if you’ll follow me please.”

Loki followed her into the building and was gladdened that the inside was a bit more palatable than the outside, with smooth modern lines and subtle blue accents. Ms. Rushman slid around a row of metal detectors and bag scanners.

“Just a precaution.” She said, gesturing for him to move through the security, which seemed to be automated.

Loki nodded and obligingly did as told. Neither the metal detector nor the bag scanner pinged. They must scan for objects and categorize them. Ms. Rushman would likely set them off, as she was most likely conventionally armed, but a bracelet and a ring passed right through.

“Now that I am here, would you oblige me by telling me a bit more about this project?”

Ms. Rushman remained quiet until they entered the elevator, which was basically a glorified glass cylinder with a tangible hologram keypad. A keypad, Loki noticed, that Ms. Rushman didn’t bother to touch, the elevator shooting upward without command. At least it was faster than the one in his apartment building

“I am sorry, you’ll have to wait to speak to Mr. Stark. I don’t have the credentials to tell you.”

Loki very much doubted that but didn’t bother to challenge the lie as the elevator slowed to a stop, the doors opening to allow them into a bubble-like foyer with a few plants and another security check retrofitted into a doorway.

They both walked through the security-door without issue despite the fact Ms. Rushman had at least a knife on her, if not several knives and a gun. Out of curiosity, he sent out a tendril of magic, sensing a gun at her back, several knives strapped to her thighs, and metal disks up her sleeves. And yet the detectors didn’t go off. Was Stark a shitty engineer or was there something infinitely more fascinating afoot?

“If it isn’t my favorite red-head, back with the space-man-that-hopefully-can!” Someone crooned, stepping into the hallway with a grin.

Ms. Rushman’s lips pulled into a grudging smile in response. Loki’s did not. He had seen Tony Stark on TV but in the flesh the man was shorter than the television would lead one to believe. Though likely just as annoying.

“Stark.” Loki said, nodding his head.

“Wow you’re real stoic, aren’t you space man.” Stark said, tapping his hands on the wall behind him. “I looked you up and all of your photos feature the same face. Do you ever smile?”

“I do when I hear something funny.” He looked Stark up and down and flashed his teeth in a fake grin. “Or when I see something funny.”

“ _Ohhhhh_.” Stark’s grin got a bit more genuine. “Space-baby got bite!”

Loki smirked a bit at that. His current persona was documented to be 28, young by any standards, especially considering his perceived accreditations. It was forever amusing to have creatures centuries younger than him reference his youth.

“If you’re done with your dick measuring contest,” someone boomed from the room behind Stark, “then we can get started.”

“Eye _eye_ , sir.” Stark said, laughing as he whirled back into the room.

Loki didn’t get the joke until he saw the man at the back of the lab. He was tall and imposing, a man used to being in charge and used to fighting to be in charge. The eye not hidden behind a patch spoke volumes of how un-amused he was by the quip.

On the other side of the lab, fiddling with a scanner, was Bruce Banner, who looked rumpled and sleep deprived. Loki assumed he’d be called in. Banner was the premier scientific mind when it came to gamma rays. He was also not alone. Loki could sense something writhing within him, something hulking and powerful and barely locked down. Something infinite and angry. Loki’s heart rate spiked and he forced himself to stay blank.

“Bruce Banner, it’s a pleasure to meet you. You’re work on anti-electron collisions is unparalleled.” He said. It sounded better than, _Bruce Banner, what an interesting monster you have inside of you._

At that Banner snorts and jerks his head at Stark. “That’s what he said.”

“Now that we all know each other.” Mr. Eyepatch began.

Stark raised his hand. “Actually you didn’t introduce yourself-.”

“I am Nick Fury, I work for the U.S. Government-.”

“SHEILD.” Stark coughs, confirming Loki's suspicion.

“-We are in charge of assessing and containing extraordinary threats to this planet. My people contracted Stark, who we had contact you, because we need help tracing a very dangerous element that has fallen into enemy hands.”

“And what exactly is this element, if I may ask?” Loki queried, playing along. 

“You must understand, Mr. Laufey, if we bring you into this, you will become the recipient of unrepeatable knowledge. Your Stark contract stated you could never share anything you learned on this job. We will hold you to that.”

Loki resisted the urge to roll his eyes. This part of the game was neither interesting nor constructive.

Fury took his silence as acquiesce and continued. “Several months ago we rediscovered a device known as the Tesseract, a power source found by HYDRA during World War II and used to make advanced weaponry.” At this he gestures to Stark, who rolled his eyes but waved his hand, pulling up a holographic screen. “That is the Tesseract.”

The screen flickered and an image solidified. In the video the artifact is held in a containment unit, a man with white hair pacing around it, writing down notes on a clipboard and tapping his chin with a finger. Loki knew that man, had seen him at a conference just this year.

“Erik Selvig.” He stated.

“Yes. He was the one that discovered that the Tesseract was reacting to something the day before yesterday. He hypothesized it was opening a portal. As it turns out, it was a good hypothesis.”

Loki didn’t dare to blink, eyes glued to the holoscreen as the artifact sparked a brilliant blue, expanding outward like a supernova. Loki felt phantom vibrations in his hands. He leaned forward and watched, enraptured, the artifact exploded outward, filling the room with dust and gas that he knew tasted like electricity. A figure rose from the center of the explosion, dress swirling around her ankles. Loki forced down a flinch as someone he never expected to see again emerged from the smoke. Amora the Enchantress. For the second time in one day, he found himself standing as a player on a new board.  _This changes everything._

Centuries after his fall, Loki had heard rumor that Amora attempted to ensorcel Thor into loving her. Odin had caught her, of course, and tossed her from Asguard for betraying the royal family. Loki had mourned for the girl she’d been before it all.

On the screen, Amora held out a hand gauntleted with a blue gem, the pair of the artifact behind her. She turned to Selvig and he jerked forward into her grasp, his eyes washing blue. An arrow few down toward her heart and pinged off her chest, useless. She turned in the direction of the projectile and threw out her hand, sending a blast of blue toward the archer. A shadow fell onto the screen, running toward her and lashing out with a bow. She grabbed it and wrenched it from the archer’s hands, kicking out with unexpected speed. The archer dodged, but she lashed out with magic and he flew forward, feet leaving the ground. Her hand fell across his heart and his eyes bled blue.

Next to him Ms. Rushman shifted. His eyes flicked to her but for once she was not fixated on him. Her eyes were on the archer as he grabbed his bow and shot down one of his comrades before coming to stand behind Amora like a toy soldier.

Amora threw her head back and shook with laughter, shouting something before reaching for the artifact and disappearing in a flash of light. The humans left on screen bolted seconds after she vanished, spiriting from the rolling mass of energy left in the middle of the room. Loki watched as it expanded, becoming more and more unstable, until it crossed a threshold and exploded outward in a shock of blue and white.

The video cut into static and Loki’s muscles tightened under his skin. This was worse than he had anticipated for in the Uber. He had suspected he’d be tracking down humans. His plan was to allow SHEILD to retrieve the artifact and then benevolently liberate it from them in the dead of night. But Amora was a different matter, and this wasn’t all her plan. She was a decent Sorcerer but she didn’t have the power, or knowledge, to make that gauntlet she wore. Nor had she ever displayed interest in Midgard when he knew her. If she were simply stealing the artifact and vanishing back into the fold of the universe, she would have done it without capturing the humans or displaying quite as much fan fair.

She was here to stay, at someone else’s bequest. _Odin’s beard. I am going to actually have to get_ involved _with this at some point._

“What is she?” Loki asked, setting the ball back in motion. They had work to do and the faster this went, the better. 

“An alien.” Fury replied. “She’s part of a species that call themselves Asgardians.”

Loki's muscles twitches unseen under his suit. “How do you know that?” He probed. “Get a lot of off-world visitors?”

“No. This video is just missing the sound. She announced herself as Amora of Asguard, said a bunch of other shit about the unworthiness of humanity and made some ominous comments.” Fury replied and Loki relaxed incrementally. The last thing he wanted was to hear Asgard had formally made its existence known to Midgard. 

“And what does she want with this Tesseract?”

“We don’t know, but we suspect she has an interest in the Tesseract’s capabilities as a portal. We need to locate her but Erik Selvig was our Astrophysical expert on the Tesseract and now she is controlling him like a flying monkey. Banner and Stark couldn’t trace the object on their own-.”

“We totally could if we had more time.” Stark cut in.

“So we went to find the next best expert and you were it. That algorithm you developed is what we need.”

“If you even have it.” Stark said.

Loki nodded his head. “I will help.”

“Good.” Fury nodded and strode to the door, posture military crisp. “I have work to do. Keep me appraised.”

There was a silent moment before Stark clapped his hands together and turned to Loki. “So, this is your show now I guess. Banner and I have done all the leg work, you just gotta finish the relay.”

“The last part of the race is the hardest.” Loki replied, somewhat depressed he knew Midgard's sports better than a Midgardian.

Stark snorted. “JARVIS, pull up what we have so far.”

“Gladly, sir.” Someone said in a crisp British accent, the room filling with a faint blue light as holographs popped up across the lab.

Loki looks around and then up, actually startled. He was the only one, Banner and Rushman don’t even twitch, and they are indeed the only others in the room. He couldn’t sense anyone else. “What-.”

“Oh, that’s just my AI. His name is JARVIS.”

“JARVIS.” Loki blinked once, and then again after he processed the statement. “An AI... Are you self aware?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How do you figure?”

“Well, sir. My job is to watch the Tower and to help Mr. Stark. However, sometimes Mr. Stark does things that makes me not want to help him. But I do it anyway, as that is my programming.”

Loki thought about this. “You have a personality?”

“Yes, though that is a bit of a rude question, Sir."

“My apologies.” Loki blinks, his stomach bubbling with excitement.

If JARVIS was what he seemed to be, he was a lot like Lokakot and Lokakot was a masterpiece. Loki had built his house from the ground up, imbuing every inch of her with magic, spending months alone with Loka in the pocket dimension, shaping her into something with a spark of life. She was one of the great prides of his existence.

Loki turned to Stark, compelled to complement him as he would a fellow Sorcerer. “I cannot believe you are famous for developing a flying piece of armor when you have also created this.”

Something flashed briefly through Starks eyes before he makes a show of puffing out his chest. “Iron Man is much more than a flying piece of armor, thank you very much.”

Loki scoffed. “From what I can see, compared to JARVIS it is practically a can opener.”

“Thank you Mr. Laufey.” JARVIS said diplomatically.

“What, you’re an expert on Artificial Intelligence now? Whatever. Just get looking at the stuff. Time’s wasting away.” Stark grouched, throwing himself dramatically into a chair. Loki thought he didn't genuinely look displeased.

Loki turned to the screens, reading the data outputs. “You’ve already begun scanning for the gamma rays then.”

“Yes.” Banner said, curving inwards as he frowned. “Without luck.”

There was no reason that Amora would think to hide the cube from the searches of Midgardian technology. Like most Asgardians, she dismissed the works of humans as infantile. Banners approach should be working… Unless she hid herself from Heimdall using the unrefined version of the spell he had taught her. That spell may confuse the scanners but it wouldn’t confuse Loki’s algorithm. In a way, his time on Midgard has shaped him into a better Sorcerer. It encouraged to seek magic beyond that of the Aesir and to learn to translate magic into a new language, Mathematics.

His algorithm, when fed through the proper technology, could find anything through any defense, be it physical or magical.

He turned to Stark, eyeing him critically for a moment. Time for a test. “Do you consider yourself to be an honorable man, Mr. Stark?”

“Excuse me?”

“Do you keep your word when you give it in earnest.”

“Are you asking me if I can keep a pinky promise?”

“I am asking if you have integrity. If I plug my algorithm into your technology, will you promise to wipe all record of it and to allow me to keep its mysteries to myself.”

Stark blinked at him, shocked. “You’d trust me to keep my word if I gave it? Have you ever even heard of corporate espionage?”

“I will know if you lie.” _And if you do I will rip my algorithm from JARVIS and rain Hel upon you. Unless it is a good lie, in which case I will just break a few bones and take JARVIS for myself._

“Uh, alrighty then.” Stark said, still looking wrong footed. “I pinky promise to wipe all record of your algorithm from my servers and to never recreate it.” _No lie._

“JARVIS?”

“Yes sir?”

“Will you promise as well?” Stark looked even more flabbergasted at that. Loki had the feeling that Stark was not usually this flappable, but then again he had never been in Loki’s presence before.

“I am not programed to prevent Mr. Stark from gaining it if he is determined to.”

“Doesn’t matter. Will you promise?”

A pause, as if the AI were thinking. Excitement bubbled again. Just how complicated was JARVIS's thought process. “Yes.” JARVIS said eventually.

Loki nodded, he could explore JARVIS's capabilities later. “Thank you. I’ll need a computer connected to your server.”

Ms. Rushman handed him a laptop. He looked at it and then at her. Her face gave nothing away but he’d be willing to bet the computer had been in SHEILD hands before it was in hers.

Before he could open his mouth to refuse the laptop, Stark spoke up. “She doesn’t work for me. She works for SHEILD.

Now it was Loki’s turn to be surprised

“Stark!” Ms. Rushman snapped.

“What? I just promised! It was a pinky promise! I can’t let Fury get his mitts on this poor guys tech. It’d be pretty hypocritical of me to feed him to the wolves like tha-.”

Loki eyed Stark’s honest expression, ignoring the flood of words. He was going to be more involved in this quest than originally planned. He might as well reveal a truth for a truth, in appreciation for Starks unexpected goodwill. “I knew.”

Stark paused mid-gesture. “What?”

“I knew she was a spy. She has a gun strapped into a back holster and moves like she could impale my spleen on one of her heels. But thank you, as much as I appreciate a good liar, I also appreciate honesty when I ask for it.”

Ms. Rushman turned to look at him, eyes edged in suspicion. She’d dropped her disguise as soon as Loki identified the location of her firearm, her stance moving onto something light-footed and fluid. If Loki ever dropped his Professor act, that was how he would stand as well. He smiled at her slyly, “I apologize for my deception, but I do believe we are even.

“How do you know where I keep my gun?” She asked, eyes narrowed.

Loki smiled for real. “I always know.”

“Uh, that’s cryptic and all,” Stark said, “but we kinda have a glow cube of death to find.”

Loki nodded and walked towards one of the computers near Banner, sliding a hand into his pocket and visualizing his algorithm. Numbers spun through his head and he focused his magic in the palm of his hand, condensing his algorithm into the form of a flash drive.

He sat down at one of the StarkTech computers and inserted the drive. Instantly the program pulled up and he typed in the parameters, using his body to shield the fact that he was largely inserting the commands with magic. After a minute the algorithm was filled out and he sent out the final command, the hair on his arms standing as magic permeated the air.

A map opened on the largest holoscreen and began to triangulate.

He turned to Ms. Rushman. “You should summon Fury and let him know that he’ll have his location in an hour.”


End file.
